Planet's health needs a team-effort

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Instead of relying on rich governments' environmental governance and policy to forcibly wean us from our dependency on climate-changing fossil fuels, each of us could reduce our household energy and resource use, recycle more and consume less.

If all of us individually took care to minimise our harm to the natural world by downsizing his carbon footprint, we could collectively and substantially mitigate the ecological assaults burgeoning humanity continues to inflict. The problem is that those of us who reduce, reuse, recycle and deeply think about our adverse lifestyles remain in the minority.

Most continue on our nonchalant route to ecological ruin because there is not a large enough disincentive to avoid petrol-guzzling four-wheel drives, the long commute from energy-sapping homes, and rid our addiction to disposable consumer goods carried in plastic shopping bags.

It is high time each of us took personal responsibility for lessening the impact of the lives we lead.

If we drove less, walked and cycled more, used small fuel-efficient cars and public transport, the world would breathe a sigh of relief.

Such a daily concerted effort by billions each day could add up to tip the balance back in favour of planet earth.

It is also unfair that those who care enough to act locally will be made to suffer the same harmful consequences of global warming and ecodegradation as the thoughtless and careless.

Regulations need to be enacted and enforced, and we need to vote in governments that genuinely care about the earth's medium- to long-term outlook.

We can continue to pretend that global warming and irretrievable eco-degradation will not prevail because we possess the ingenuity to fix our assaults on mother nature, but in the end, the laws of physics will prevail.